George - Frisbie - Hoar 



\ 



George - Frisbie - Hoar 



REPRINT FROM 

REMINISCENCES AND BIOGRAPHICAL 

NOTICES OF PAST MEMBERS 

OF THE WORCESTER 

FIRE SOCIETY 

'1917^ 



1 T a.y\k i aT^'jM^TiD 



^ e S 5 «.-r 



GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR 

George Frisbie Hoar was born in Concord, Massa- 
chusetts, on August 29, 1826, and came to Worcester in 
1849. Perhaps because he thought that his time at 
Harvard had been wasted or because he was impatient 
that place and employment did not come to him at once, 
this young man, slight of frame and spare of face plunged 
fiercely into legal and literary study. His day began earlj' 
by sweeping his office and building the fire and ended 
late after evening office hours by a long and lonely walk to 
his Belmont Street or his new Oak Avenue house where 
he rekindled the open fire and, hidden in clouds of cigar 
smoke, read Thucydides, Homer or the English poets until 
one or two o'clock in the morning. 

Benjamin F. Thomas gave him office room for a few 
months, but he soon had the good fortune to be taken 
into partnership by Emory Washburn, and, when Mr. 
Washburn became Governor two years later, he succeeded 
to and held his large clientage. Contrary to his expecta- 
tions and to what he conceived to be his abilities he 
found himself a trial lawyer in the days when the road 
to professional reputation was through the court rather 
than the office. The Yankee love of litigation rushed 
every dispute large or small to the last tribunal and a 
law suit was hotly contested under hampering rules of 
evidence and pleading before an audience that delighted 
in the fencing of wits and the high pitched eloquence of 
the address to the jury. The flood of law books and 
reports had not yet begun and a lawyer studied English 
cases and sought for principles which our great judges, 
Shaw, Metcalfe, Merrick and Thomas turned into pre- 
cedents that guided the jurisprudence of the country. 
Mr. Hoar's industrj^ and vigor, clearness of statement 
and keenness of intellect quickly won him eminence at a 



bar which numbered many able men, both in the rough 
and tumble of nisi prius and in the logical and learned 
arguments to the court. His practice became large and 
lucrative and the firms of Devens & Hoar and Bacon & 
Aldrich pretty much divided the law business of the 
county. 

Worcester and Worcester County were the stronghold 
of the new Anti-Slavery Party to which he had sworn 
allegiance and chiefly for this reason he chose the city as a 
place to live. The convention which formed the Free 
Soil party met in Worcester. The call for it was written 
by Judge Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar and Mr. Hoar's 
earliest political duty was to fold and direct the circulars. 
The party was guided by earnest and able men who 
found in him an ardent and efficient lieutenant. A speech 
in answer to an unexpected call brought him into notice 
and led to an election to the Massachusetts House which 
he accepted only after obtaining his father's consent. 
Later he served a term in the State Senate. 

Civic matters interested him. He was active in the 
formation and support of the Young Men's Library 
Association, which, in 1859, with Doctor John Green's 
gift became the Free Public Library, of which Mr. Hoar 
was president. He helped also to establish the Worces- 
ter Polytechnic Institute and readily lent a hand to any 
measure for the common welfare. Although a busy man 
he always found time to chat with his law students 
or visit his brother attorneys. The society of the town, 
however, perhaps because of his diffidence in ladies' 
company or his brusqueness, was rather irksome to him 
and he fled the evening party as soon as he decently 
could. He got along without physical exercise. A 
walking tour in the Berkshires with Horace Gray and the 
memory of that excursion served him for all the exercise he 
seemed to need during his life. 



Looking back on those days he advised young men to 
seize every opportunity for pubHc speaking, to learn to 
dance and to enter a room properly, and to learn to box, 
for the time might come when the only resource was to 
knock down the offender. 

In 1868 nature demanded a rest and he spent a long 
summer in England, the second of his six visits, to find, 
on his return, that he had been elected to Congress. 
Thus began without his own desire a life-long service in 
House and Senate; a service that forbade the certain 
realization of his hope of professional preferment and 
emolument, that twice prevented his acceptance of a seat 
on the Supreme Judicial Court, that compelled his 
refusal of President Hayes' offer of the English Mission, 
that forced him to forsake his library and his orchard for 
the uncomfortable vicissitudes of Washington lodgings; 
and yet, a service that upheld and continued the best 
traditions of Massachusetts legislators and the influence 
of Massachusetts in national and party councils. A 
Senator from Massachusetts was, in his estimation, the 
very personification of the Commonwealth with the 
right and duty ever to voice and to sustain her highest 
ideals; there could be no greater dignity. 

Mr. Hoar's legal ability and industry made him a 
valuable committeeman. In legislation his name is 
connected rather with measures of a professional or 
administrative character, Bankruptcy, The Force Bill, 
the Presidential Succession, the Electoral Commission 
and acts relating to the Federal Judiciary, than with the 
more popular enactments affecting commerce, revenue or 
foreign policy in which he had little knowledge or interest. 
A moral issue won at once his support and he held fast 
to the faith of the Fathers. He never fought more strenu- 
ously or more full-heartedly than he did against the 
Philippine policy and it was a deep satisfaction to him 



c 

that Massachusetts, m spite of her disapproval of his 
position, returned him again to the Senate. 

Mr. Hoar has been called a partisan. He firmly be- 
lieved that government could only be carried on success- 
fully by party, and that so long as a man believed in the 
chief principles of the party it was his duty to support it 
even though some particular measure were wrong or 
distasteful. When the party policy had been determined, 
whether with his assent in all respects or without, he 
became its willing and vigorous champion. He was 
ready always to buckle on his armor and shiver a lance 
against any opponent, neither giving nor expecting 
quarter. He carried to the debates of the Senate and to 
the hustings, the same skill and fashion of advocacy that 
he had been accustomed to employ for his clients. He 
perhaps unduly glorified his own cause and its adherents 
and unduly condemned the opposition and his foeman, 
and perhaps too often he confused the speaker with 
the principle and acquired prejudices that he never forgot. 
A biting invective and unanswerable repartee made 
attack upon him hazardous. "Pungent, but not un- 
parliamentary" was the finding of a Committee of the 
Senate which had taken down his words. When ^ i wiTitor 
Cox, disdaining Hoar's speech, pointed to Senator Dawes 
who was silent and said, "Massachusetts does not send 
her Hector to the field," Mr. Hoar retorted that "there 
was no need of Hector when Thersites lead the charge." 
He knew the minds and hearts of the people and had a 
sure instinct for the paths that would reach and rouse 
their calmer judgment and better emotions. Alone 
among the New England Congressmen and contrary to 
the desires of the section, he supported the first River 
and Harbor Bill. Getting up to speak before the hostilely 
silent State Convention he said, "I see among you many 
faces of my friends; into none of them am I either afraid 



or ashamed to look," and tlie Convention hesitated, 
then applauded and the opposition faded gradually 
awa3\ Unnecessarily and against the advice of all his 
friends he wrote the A. P. A. letter, "The atmosphere 
of the Republic is the air of the mountain toj) and the 
sunlight and the open field. Her emblem is the eagle and 
not the bat." And the movement died in the "cellar" 
where it had been born. 

In college he evinced his dislike for the requirement of 
public declamations by going into the woods and yelling 
until he cracked his voice. Yet, with a strident and un- 
melodious voice and with little grace of presence or 
gesture he was an effective orator. Mr. Lodge describes 
his style as "noble and dignified, with a touch of the 
stateliness of the 18th century, rich in imagery and 
allusion, full of the apt quotations which an unerring 
taste, an iron memorj^ and the widest reading combined 
to furnish. When he was roused, when his imagination 
was fired, his feelings engaged or his indignation awakened 
he was capable of a passionate eloquence which touched 
every chord of emotion and left no one who listened to him 
unmoved." 

When the Session ended he hurried to Worcester to 
busy himself in his library with literary or antiquarian 
researches or to prepare the speeches upon a wide range of 
subjects for which he was in demand. A lifelong interest 
had gathered a rich collection of autographs, association 
books, rare editions of the Classics and Americana. 
His library was his workshop, every book of which he 
knew and loved, and where he would have been content 
to be immured. 

Harvard, of which he was Overseer and President of 
the Alumni, Clark University, the Polytechnic, the 
American Antiquarian Society, the Massachusetts Histori- 
cal Society, all called on him for service willingly rendered. 



The Riifiis Putnam House was saved from ruin, and the 
statue to General Devens and the Worcester County 
Soldiers in the Rebellion was erected through his efforts. 
He wrote the almost perfect motto for the Court House, 
"Here speaketh the conscience of the State restraining 
the individual will," and, discovering that Wordsworth 
had said substantially the same thing, was careful to 
see that his name, which had been placed under it, was 
cut out. He secured the return to the Commonwealth 
of the Bradford Manuscript and liked to think that 
thereby he had paid in some measure his debt to the 
Fathers. 

Rest or vacations were for him merely a change of 
labor. Virgil was his shipmate on his voyages and he 
made his Greek translations, as Professor Story wrote 
his book on Bills and Notes, in the few minutes while 
waiting for dinner. He had no idle moments and turned 
easily and at once from study to literature or from pur- 
poseful conversation to the scribbling of a paragraph on a 
handy scratch block. 

He loved the Massachusetts countryside and knew 
her trees, and flowers, and birds. The sweet and pathetic 
petition of the Song Birds to the Legislature shows both 
his love for nature and his poetic instinct. He bought 
the crest of Asnebumskit where he used to lie on his 
back and look up at the clouds and where he once saw 
an eagle and begged through the newspapers that people 
would not shoot it. A drive with the Senator was an 
experience not likely to be forgotten by the timid. He 
would urge on his horses, oblivious of grade or weather, 
with reins loose, and peering this way or that for some 
landmark or uncommon tree or bird; a graveyard would 
awaken some memory of a county worthy, or a farmhouse 
would recall a whimsical or amusing tale of a Yankee 
character, an ancient hard fought law suit or a bit of 



9 

local history. Seemingly everything he ever read or 
saw or heard left its imprint on his memory to be re- 
called at will. 

His humor was quick and playful. "Pardon, sir," said 
a stranger on the Boston train, "you resemble Senator 
Hoar, are you related to him.''" "Well, I am a connection 
of his wife by marriage." A friend's illness turned out 
to be indigestion instead of appendicitis — "Evidently 
the trouble was with his table of contents, not with his 
appendix." Correcting the Latin of a long-winded 
speaker he said that he presumed the Senator used a 
short "i" in order to save the time of the Senate. 

He liked children, not as playthings but as companions, 
and he told them the most wonderful stories and read the 
most beautiful poems and somehow could find a present 
that went straight to the childish heart. At Christmas 
time he would fill his pockets with new silver and many a 
little ragamuffin scampered home with a shiny quarter 
gripped tight in his fist. 

He liked pretty things, jewelry, a woman's dress, a well 
laid table, a little ornament. Poetry and noble prose he 
loved, but for music, painting, sculpture, and the drama 
he had no interest or appreciation and (must it be con- 
fessed) Primrose & West's Minstrels always found him a 
delighted auditor. 

In his youth the Puritan Sabbath had not begun to 
"abate" and he was still accustomed to keep Sunday as 
a day apart. After breakfasting, with a volume of 
George Herbert or Henry Vaughan in hand, on coffee and 
fishballs, about which he once wrote entertainingly to a 
newspaper, he would gather his family and read a chapter 
from the Bible and a prayer and go scrupulously to 
church. His Calvinist inheritance required him to support 
his church and hold up the hands of the appointed 
minister; but his God was the Deitv of the cathedral, the 



10 

mosque and the meetinghouse ahke. Censure, dis- 
appointment and grief were, in his philosophy, but the 
penalties of mortal life, powerless against a steadfast 
mind and an immortal soul. 

He lived simply and with self-restraint in all personal 
matters, as was the habit of the Puritan, but he was fond 
of the company of his friends and knew and liked good 
dinners. It was with no regret that he endorsed over 
to a Washington caterer a large cheque which had just 
paid a professional fee. He enjoyed greatly the dinners 
of the Council of the Antiquarian Society, of the St. 
Wulstan and of the Fire Society, and if sometimes it 
seemed that he controlled the feast, it was a control 
willingly and profitably yielded. It was at one of the 
Fire Society dinners that he suggested the formation of 
the Worcester Club of which he became the first president. 
He delighted to gather a few of his cronies for a junket, 
in the old days to Tourtelotte's in Millbury or Taft's at 
Point Shirley, in later times to Mrs. Pierce's in Rutland, 
and there, over a bird, served under a name unknown 
to game warden or ornithologist, with a glass of wine or a 
strange milk, which only Mrs. Pierce's cow knew how to 
give, he would tell his stories, rally his friends and frolic 
like a boy out of school. 

The loyalty that he gave to his clients and to his party 
he gave also to his associates, to his friends and to his 
family. He had no secrets from them and trusted them as 
freely and as fully as he was himself capable of being 
trusted. If one acquired a niche in Mr. Hoar's affections 
he became at once endowed with abilities and virtues 
hitherto unsuspected and capable of filling even the 
highest positions. Not unsusceptible to flattery himself 
Mr. Hoar's eulogies were apt to be extravagant. 

He came of sound Puritan ancestry. If there still be 
such things in this country as "governing families" he 



11 

was one of the three or four siicli families in Massachu- 
setts and of perhaps the dozen in the country which, 
in successive generations for two hundred and fifty years, 
rendered high service in peace and war and statecraft to 
viUage and state and nation. He was honorably proud 
of that inheritance, but his pride was not self-exaltation 
nor did it stifle sympathy, appreciation or affection for 
humbler folk. His pride was a "stern daughter of the 
voice of God" and imposed high ideals and forbade base 
actions. He believed that he who failed to meet the 
obligations of his inheritance was to be condemned as 
he who surpassed them was to be praised or he who had 
none was to be excused. He sacrificed, therefore, time 
and money and future hopes to private duties and to the 
public service. It may be said with almost exact truth 
that no public or private action of his was instigated or 
directed by self-interest. If benefit came to him it was 
the by-product and not the purpose of the act. 

"Let his great example stand 

Colossal, seen of every land. 

And keep the soldier firm, the statesman pure; 

Till in all lands and thro' all human story 

The path of duty be the way to glory." 

Of course he was a poor man. However large his in- 
come, he would always have been poor. He rather 
doubted whether, if a man could earn, the words "thrift " 
and "economy" were to be found in a gentleman's vocabu- 
lary. Money was to be spent, not hoarded; not spent 
lavishly nor selfishly, unless a rare edition, a print, or a 
dinner for his friends be selfish. Good causes were to 
be supported and he could never quite understand why 
others should not give as generously as he. Nor must a 
friend stumble or fall by the wayside if timely word or 
generous gift could help. More than once has his quick 



12 

s\aiipathy and powerful aid prevented a catastrophe, 
and he justified this not as generosity but as the payment 
of some obhgation real or, to a nature less exacting than 
his, fanciful. He did not complain when this scheme of 
life compelled self-denial or when it prevented the ac- 
ceptance of President McKinley's offer of the English 
Mission, which came at a time when the Motherland, her 
lakes and downs, her cathedrals and colleges and courts, 
her judges and scholars and statesmen attracted him 
more than ever before. That was a gentleman's way of 
life; any other was sordid. 

"Libero et honesto animo et ad voluptates honestas 
nato." 

Time and quieter days (though he said giving up cigars 
and ceasing to try cases) had brought plumpness to his 
figure and a benevolent expression to his countenance 
which seemed to betoken a simple and unsuspicious 
nature, and not seldom proved a trap for the unwary. 

As we knew him in familiar, friendly intercourse, 
addressing none by his Christian name as none for years 
had called him "Frisbie," twirling his keys when the 
talk became interesting, or pursing his lips and frowning 
slightly if such things as "Mugwumps" or other pet 
crotchets were touched on; or as we saw him walking 
slowly down the street tapping the stones with his cane 
and muttering some verse or stopping to squint near- 
sightedly into a shop window, there remained no hint 
or scar of "battles long ago." 

Mr. Hoar was twice married. To Mary Louisa Spurr 
in 1853, by whom he had two children, Mary and Rock- 
wood Hoar; and in 1862 to her close friend, Ruth A. 
Miller, daughter of Henry W. Miller, by whom he had 
one child who died in infancy. 

Ruth Hoar died suddenly on Christmas Eve in 1903, 
and with her death his strength departed and his book of 



13 

life seemed siiddenlj- to close. The measures in which he 
was most interested had been decided and new questions 
whose end he could not hope to see were being debated 
by new men in a strange fashion and from a different 
standpoint. "There arose up a new king in Egypt which 
knew not Joseph." The friends of youth and middle life 
had gone, and younger shoulders could not replace the 
tried supports or younger tongues supply the fearless 
advice that he missed and needed. Quietly and willingly 
he laid aside his battered but unsullied armor and, with- 
out regret or apprehension, died at his home in Worcester 
on September 30, 1904. 

On the walls of his library were painted three mottoes 
and in the spirit of them he lived: 

(In Greek) "Work while it is day for the night 
Cometh when no man can work," 

"Man is no star, but a quick Coal 

Of Mortal Fire. 

Who blows it not nor doth Control 

A faint Desire 

Lets his own Ashes choke his Soul." 

"QUOVAGORULTERIUSQUODUBIQUEREQUI 

RITURHICESTHICESCURAQUI ESHICESTH 

ONESTUSAMOR" 

Which he was accustomed to render, 

"Rest I at home, why seek I more 
Here's comfort, books and Mrs. Hoar." 

F. F. D. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



013 785 487 9 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



111 111 illiilii illilll" 



013 785 487 9 



P6Rnuli(^« 
pH8J 



